


Setback

by Gabri



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Gen, Mental Instability, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-10
Updated: 2014-03-10
Packaged: 2018-01-15 07:11:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1296049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gabri/pseuds/Gabri
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She can't do it, but they don't know that. Maybe a year or so ago she could have drawn the electricity through her heart, but now the power she holds inside her only comes bursting out through her eyes and her mouth and the cracks in her mind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Setback

She can't do it, but they don't know that. Maybe a year or so ago she could have drawn the electricity through her heart, but now the power she holds inside her only comes bursting out through her eyes and her mouth and the cracks in her mind.

She tried, and she can't. The concept of failing is still so new to her that the realization of here, now, _forever_ , has yet to completely sink in.

There are voices beyond her cell. Zuko's brought someone with him.

"You don't understand - you didn't _see_ her..."

Her brother's voice is climbing. It always does this when he's upset. It's not particularly difficult to rile him, of course, but this is an unexpected source. 

Azula laughs. Maybe he's feeling guilty.

Or maybe it's just the Avatar's all-perfect _goodness_ taking root in him, with no room left for a different moral code.

How ridiculous. If their positions were switched, she'd be _jumping_ at the chance of becoming an only child so easily. She certainly wouldn't have cried for him. Not for any of them, least of all little Zuzu, always so breakable, attention seeking. Transparent.

It's pleasing, in a way, to think of him suffering over her death. A show of his weakness, just like their uncle: soft where it mattered and unable to pick himself up from the smallest setback.

"Aang, you're the only one that can stop her from..."

"I know." The Avatar's voice is just as weak as the rest of him. She used to bathe in that memory of plucking him from the ground in Ba Sing Se. How shockingly easy it was to lift him. All limp and stirring, soft, like the down feathers they used to stuff her pillows with. She had wondered if his bones were hollow, like a bird's, and if squeezing her fingers just so would snap his wings off as easily.

She should have done it then. Precise, clean, quick. His face was a painting from her history books with the blood poured back inside. She could have taken notes after draining him dry. Why didn't she?

"...but I can't do it." the Avatar rasps from outside her cell. Azula's fingers twitch in their bonds.

"What do you mean? You've done it before." There's fire in his bite, a sizzling crackle. He sounds a bit like her father, regrettably. Maybe even more so than he once was, now that the heat has been siphoned from his skin. "You did it for my father, so do it for _her!_ "

"It's not that easy." his voice is starting to shake. "Taking a person's bending away is _dangerous_. When I took the Firelord's bending, I could feel his energy trying to corrupt me. He almost did! And he wasn't anything like your sister -- I don't know what she could _do!_ "

"She's going to die, Aang!" How _sweet_. He really does care. "Are you just going to _let her die?_ "

"She's not a threat to the world anymore. It's her free will. I can't control her like that, it's all she has left. And if I took it away, I don't think I could give it back..."

_I dare you_ , Azula thinks fiercely. She feels frozen inside, splintering. _I dare you to put your hands on me. I dare you to come within breathing distance of me. I **want** you to._ From beyond her twisted cell, Zuko is falling apart. 

"Don't tell me - it's another one of your teachings. You're too goody-goody to interfere unless the world itself is burning. You're just running away again!"

It's a form of power, in a way, to hear how they struggle with her. A form of fear, maybe. For a long time, the Avatar doesn't answer, and maybe that's fear too. Maybe it's weakness. The two aren't always so different after all. "That's not true." he says at last, quietly. 

"You're too _passive!_ If you take her fire away, she'll be miserable and it'll be your all your fault - you can't have that dirt on your hands, huh? So you won't even try!? Just because you're _scared_ \--"

"-- _yes_ , I'm _scared_ , okay?!" The intensity of the outburst startles them both. She can hear it in the clatter of Zuko's step, the sharp intake of air that the Avatar sucks in guiltily through his teeth. When he speaks again there's more control, but it's unraveling at the edges. Maybe Zuko can't hear it, but Azula can - she's practiced in finding chinks in other's armor. "I'm sorry. I can't." 

"It's not that you can't -- you _won't._ "

"I'm _sorry._ " He says again. Even Zuko must hear him breaking now. "It wouldn't fix her." He's getting desperate. "You...you said it was like the sun, but inside of you..." 

Her brother makes a wounded sound.

"Zuko, please..." 

Boots clicking on the metal floor. 

"Zuko, _please!_ " 

A door wretched open, then slammed tightly shut. The Avatar is crying. He doesn't weep like her brother once did - shameful, self-hating. Proud. There's none of the fire nation's righteous anger here - this is miserable frustration, helplessness. It disgusts her, really - this is the boy that destroyed her father from the inside. By all rights she should be basking in the echos of his sobs through her cell, but instead it feels like a form of suffocation, something thicker and more deadly than black smoke.


End file.
